ATTRACTIONS
What was your inspiration? I’m a sculptor and was mainly working on land and with the landscape. I was creating objects that had no functional purpose other than their artistic value – the world’s cluttered enough, we need more of a reason to make things. I had the idea that if I worked under-
water, these objects would not only discuss the boundaries of art, they’d create habitat space for sea life and be benefi cial to the environment. That was the main driving force.
How did you get started? The fi rst museum was in Grenada in 2006. I grew up in Spain, Portugal, Malaysia and the UK and happened to be living and teaching scuba diving in Grenada at the time. I’d had the idea for the underwater sculptures for a while, so looked into how feasible it was and presented the concept to the local government. They were sceptical, but interested, so I started small with a couple of pieces and added to them. It kept growing
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Jason deCaires Taylor wants to use his sculptures to educate visitors about ocean ecology
and more people started to help and support the project. Over the course of two years I built the fi rst underwa- ter sculpture park, which contains 65 individual works and is called Grenada Underwater Sculpture Park. The government of Mexico, after see- ing this project, invited me to address some of the problems they have with high levels of tourism in Cancun. MUSA (Museo Subacuático de Arte) opened in 2009 and has 510 perma- nent sculptural works.
How do the museums benefi t the environment? Prior to the museum, there was only one good snorkelling area in Grenada. All the boats would congregate in that area and there was damage to the reef from people jumping off boats and
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kicking corals and it was slowly dete- riorating. I created another snorkelling site nearby to relieve some of that pressure – coral grows on the sculp- tures and fi sh live around them. It was a similar objective in Cancun. The area has more than 750,000 visi- tors each year, so the objective was to try and manage those people and minimise the impact to the reef. The government wanted to start closing sections of the reef down to allow them to rejuvenate and thrive, but the business community threatened to sue the government for closing down their economy and insisted on an alter- native offer. It was at that point that they contacted me.
How has the local community benefi ted? The statistics are amazing. In Cancun, the diving has increased by 30 per cent in a few years and now gets over 80,000 visitors annually. In Grenada, the area never used to have visitors, but now gets 20,000 people a year.
ISSUE 2 2014 © cybertrek 2014
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